Note: this is Jarod's reply to a personal conversation I had with him last weekend...
I understand (I think) about how hard it is for you to connect with God, and how to know what to believe. Epistemology is tough as crotch. I've been renewed lately by the way other cultures (and religions) look at life... as if simplicity, contemplation, intuition, measured study, balanced living, and the heart- these are all ways of walking the path of truth. Not like ours, which says MORE reading, MORE eating, MORE schooling, MORE networking, MORE experiences, MORE growth, MORE proofs and theorems. It's kind of maddening. I think it's one of the most harmful religions, our scientific mindset... while it may erase some age-old prejudices, eventually it leaves you emptier than Buddhism.
Trusting God has been a delightful thing for me this week. I know it's really not all that provable in the evidence sense. It states a claim to a radically different system than what most people live by, which is survival. Believing it and choosing to live it is a self-fulfilling prophesy. By saying it's right and doing it, it proves itself true. By saying it's bogus(the christian message) and ignoring it, i'ts easily justified away.
Faith is a choice.
I want you to know that I have great chasms in my mind right now between science, evidence, and the Bible (and church). I can't reconcile so much,and it leaves me feeling uneasy and disingenuine at times.
Yet, I've called upon an old philosophical term as my trump card, and I'm using it as I go along in life... it's called "epistemic deferral". It basically means that I know I believe something,and I'm certain of it, but I cannot tell you why yet. I haven't gotten all the facts, haven't understood all the issues, haven't figured it all out. But yet I stand on that ground.
I hope you find your ground. I know you are. I know that God is finding you too. I guess just don't resist his love. As hard as it is for me to believe, I think that behind the "wizard of oz curtain" of the universe, is a place where we meet god face to face and laugh really really hard. Maybe for a millenium.
